City Of Hope

The euphoria that spread across the sand on Copacabana beach as Cariocas learned their city would host the 2016 Olympics was the electrifying kind that spontaneously oozes only from those once vanquished by hopelessness.

Rio de Janeiro had expected victory against rival cities, Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo, judging from the crowds that had gathered long before the announcement. Yet they were still ecstatic: Hundreds of thousands of Rio's inhabitants shed tears of joy. They hugged and kissed; they danced for hours; they waved and clutched Brazilian flags. But what triggered the waves of emotion was coming face to face with the realization that Rio may now finally have a chance of emerging from decades of decadence and neglect.

"It's the best chance we could ever have of resurrecting our beautiful but crime-ridden, polluted and slum-covered city to its old glory," said one woman as she danced to samba tunes on the beach.

Despite possessing some of the most idyllic natural scenery of any metropolis and being known as "Cidade Maravilhosa" (marvelous city), Rio fell into a steady course of decline since it lost its role as capital of Brazil to Brasilia in 1960. Big business went to the industrial capital, Sao Paulo. Bureaucrats in Brasilia had long ignored Rio's slump into urban decay.

A succession of corrupt local governments, exacerbated by a passive rich elite and a police force that resorted to vigilante-style law enforcement has fueled the growth of sprawling shanties where drug gangs rule. Transport systems are chaotic and inefficient and many natural treasures have been destroyed by open sewage and pollution.

Rio's fortunes began to turn with the recent emergence of Brazil as a leading world economic player and political giant. For the first time in decades there is also coherence between Rio's local government and the central government.

President Inácio Lula da Silva--a former metal worker from the industrial outskirts of Sao Paulo who is credited with putting Latin America's biggest economy onto the world stage--has been at the forefront of plans to regenerate and "save" Rio. His emotional speech to the Olympic Committee must have earned the Cidade Maravilhosa a few extra votes. He argued that with a healthy national economy to foot the bill, political willingness and a ticket to host the world's biggest event, dreams for Rio could now finally come true.

"We have been given the chance; now it will all depend on what we do with it," said Rio Mayor Eduardo Peas as he celebrated his city's selection. Rio will be looking for an urban makeover similar to the one Barcelona got for the 1992 Olympics. But Barcelona's decadent port area and poor neighborhoods, which needed major reforms, don't compare to Rio's polluted Guanabara Bay, algae-infested Lagoa Rodrigo Freitas, sprawling shanties and abandoned port.

To get the beachside city ready for the Games, Rio presented the biggest budget-spending proposals of any of its rivals--around $16 billion.

The only things already in place that do not need a revamp are the stunning backdrops of the famed Corcovado mountain, the Sugar Loaf, 30 kilometers of beaches and a handful of sports facilities built for the Pan American Games held in Rio in 2007.

The city is also hosting the 2014 World Cup finals at the Maracana stadium, and some of the reforms for this event will also be used for the Olympics.

But the vast extent of "clean up" the city will have to undergo before it can welcome the world's biggest sporting event is apparent to a visitor only minutes after landing at its Tom Jobim International Airport, which must double its passenger capacity by 2014.

The highway leading into Rio is flanked by the badly polluted waters of the Guanabara Bay. The bay is where some of the water sports events will be held, and plans to drain it of pollution are estimated to cost at least $580 million.

On the shores of the bay and along the highway are seemingly endless stretches of flat shanties known as Complexo do Alemão. Machine gun battles between the three rival gangs that fight over the drugs trade in Rio and who use the favelas as cover and hide-outs understandably trigger panic among drivers heading into town.

Rio's biggest challenge is to improve conditions and cut crime in more than 30 favelas that house more than 1 million of the city's 9 million inhabitants. For past big events, like the 1992 Earth Summit and the more recent Pan American Games, the city deployed troops to keep the gang war from spilling onto the streets.

However, in the campaign to put Rio forward as the candidate for the Olympics, it became evident that economic development is a far stronger weapon than guns against the spread of crime. Rio's shanties are perched on a hillside overlooking some of its key sites, not just on the flatter outskirts. Most of the stadiums and tracks needed for the Games will be near the hillside slums.

At least five favelas have begun to receive government funding for improvements as part of a Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), and more than $600 million is expected to go into this project in the coming years.

A property boom in some of the best-located favelas--those that boast better sea views than most luxury apartments on Copacabana and Ipanema beach--is already underway and has been the best medicine against the cocaine traffickers that once ruled there.

Since the arrival of a "Peace Unit" at the Dona Marta shanty in the Botafogo district (part of the PAC plan), home prices have risen fourfold, said one dweller. "I just sold a two-room brick house that was worth 8,000 real when drug traffickers still ran our favela for 30,000 real now that there is peace," said Ronaldo Pereira. Dona Marta is set on steep hillsides overlooking the Lagoa Rodrigo Freitas, which will be hosting the rowing events in 2016.

Overlooking the Copacabana beachfront is the hillside favela of Cantagalo. Here, dwellers have joined authorities to make sure that hooded traffickers who once guarded its alleys with machine guns are kept out. They have seen their precariously built houses double in value and want to reap the further benefits which they hope the preparations for 2016 will bring.

"When you live in a favela that is not held up by crime, it's not just house prices that go up ... it's also easier to get a job," said one Cantagalo inhabitant.

Cariocas and their political leaders face a mammoth task, one that might be prone to corruption and inefficiency. It will not be an overnight transformation, but if ever there was a moment for this largely young, sport-mad population of Brazilians, it is this.

Gabriella Gamini, a former South America correspondent for The Times of London, is a writer based in Brasilia, Brazil.